Broadband access to the Internet offers significantly increased speed and availability when compared to dial-up (i.e., or narrowband) access. Broadband is a provided via a dedicated connection, thus making it a relatively ‘always-on connection’. Generally, a broadband access connection provides bi-directional network connection speeds of at least about 200,000 bits per second (bps). By contrast, a relatively fast dial-up access connection provides maximum bi-directional network connection speeds of about 56,000 bps. However, the connection speed of a typical dial-up access connection is often much slower because of imperfections on the line.
The speed and availability of broadband has contributed to the rapidly increasing demand for broadband by residential subscribers. Such service is referred to herein as residential broadband. This speed and availability enables residential broadband to support not only data service, but also video services and home entertainment services such as, for example, virtual reality gaming, downloadable music and video, multimedia presentations, VolP (Voice over IP) and other services that require relatively a high-speed connection to provide a suitable quality-of-service.
Due in part to increased demands for and expectations of residential broadband, the landscape for residential broadband service is changing. New types of services will require multiple classes of service levels to provide differentiated treatment for high-quality services. Aggregation networks for residential broadband traffic will optimally move from ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) based networks to Ethernet-based aggregation networks. Additionally, new services might introduce alternative subscriber management and auto-configuration requirements.
The transition to an Ethernet aggregation network will have a particularly significant impact on the way services are delivered over the aggregation network. In such a conventional Ethernet aggregation network, access nodes with Ethernet-based network interfaces can either be restricted to operate only at the Ethernet layer, a pure layer-2, or work as full router, which significantly limits the ability to offer IP (Internet Protocol) forwarding flexibility and security in the access node while retaining the usage of a layer-2 aggregation network. Accordingly, the use of a broadcast medium (e.g., Ethernet) in combination with a point-to-point access technology for mass deployment poses a variety of security and scalability challenges. These challenges include, are not be limited to, suitable implementation of isolating a service subscriber for traffic forwarding, isolating the service subscriber for security reasons and isolating the service subscriber for billing.
Standard routing with proxy ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) in the access node represents a conventional approach for implementing residential broadband service with an Ethernet based aggregation network. Such standard routing with proxy ARP is accomplished by implementing Ethernet ARP under RFC (Request For Comments) 1027 via subnet gateways to permit hosts on the connected subnets to communicate without being aware of the existence of subnets (i.e., using Proxy ARP). Accordingly, such proxy ARP allows a network element such as a router, which is physically located on one network, appear to be logically part of a different physical network connected to the same host (e.g., router). Typically, proxy ARP allows a machine with a public IP address on a private network to be hid behind a router, and still have the machine appear to be on the public network “in front of” the router. The router proxys ARP requests and all network traffic to and from the hidden machine to make this fiction possible.
However, there are a number of potential problems with the use of proxy ARP. These problems include, but are not limited to, difficulties in protecting against attacks, requiring undesirable amounts of processing power, having a relatively complex configuration and making it relatively difficult to block direct user-to-user communication. Additionally, constraints on IP address allocation schemes often result in inefficient use of address space and complex configuration.
Therefore, an approach for implementing residential broadband service with an Ethernet-based aggregation network in a manner that at least partially overcomes shortcomings associated with conventional approaches for implementing residential broadband service with an Ethernet-based aggregation network would be advantageous, useful and novel.